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One of my favorite features in the Sunday print edition is the college football Top 25 recap. While I know many of the results, from following games on Saturday, it's fun to get a recap of those results, as well as seeing who those teams will play the next week.
It's a good format, because it usually holds to one page and gives the reader a lot of useful and compact information.
That content can work online as well and could be a significant page view driver if you consider a photo gallery treatment.
NBC sports each week captures the Top 25 results with a photo from each game, the score and a cutline-style summary on the game. This is a really nice treatment for this content. Unlike the print format, where just the team's logo appears, this presentation gives the reader the opportunity to see a photo from every game.
While this feature would take a lot of time for something that is wire content, you could use this format online for high school sports content in a few ways.
1. Previews: This would be a great tool to preview games. If your newspaper runs glances on each game, you could post those as cutlines (as long as they were short) with a file photo.
2. Game recap: For a Sunday package or a Monday rewind, giving your high school football fans a recap of the Friday night games in a gallery, just like the AP package, would be really effective.
3. Quarter-by-quarter: Some newspapers offer quarter-by-quarter breakdowns of football games in an alternative story format. If you do this, the gallery tool, offering four photos, one for each quarter, would be really effective.
David Arkin is the Vice President of Content & Audience for GateHouse Media. He oversees all matters related to print and online content, strategy, and online development and support related to the company’s content management system. From 2007-2011 he served as the executive director of the News & Interactive Division for GateHouse Media. Prior to that, he served as the executive editor of Greater Niagara Newspapers (Niagara Falls, N.Y.) and served as the top editor for the Cullman Times (Ala.), the Porterville Recorder (Calif.) and the Huntsville Item (Texas).
